The Halo saga...

[Soi]

I've just finished "Ghosts of Onyx" too.

I thought it was fantastic, but not quite as good as books 1 and 3. Very interesting plot developments though.

Halo 3 will only be about the Chief and not the other Spartans. The events of "Ghosts of Onyx" probably happened at the same time as those of Halo 3 anyway.

[Mardigan8]

I've just finished "Ghosts of Onyx" too.

I thought it was fantastic, but not quite as good as books 1 and 3. Very interesting plot developments though.

Halo 3 will only be about the Chief and not the other Spartans. The events of "Ghosts of Onyx" probably happened at the same time as those of Halo 3 anyway.

Have to agree with this. I was hoping the book would bring all the stories together and set up events for 3 but like you say Soi it is definitly more of a paralllel story. Would still be nice to see The Chief fight along side other SPARTANs but not sure how they will work it into the story from where the book ends.

[JohnMcL7]

Still need to order up my copy of Ghosts of Onyx or more likely wait for my brother to finish reading his since he borrowed the original Halo trilogy off me.

Has it been decided where Halo Wars fits in? I've read it's before the original Halo which partially makes sense as they're fighting Elites but a lot of it doesn't make sense. They seem to be using battle rifles which were mentioned in First Strike and Halo 2 first from memory, they Spartans were always using assault rifles before that. I guess that could simply be the case that it was their weapon of choice.

But then you have the Spartans themselves which look to be wearing armour which is a generation on from the MC's version in Halo 2, it has similar features but looks more scuplted to fit the body better. The original armour in Halo looks quite basic as it's just several big chunks. By memory, the armour in the first game was either the second or third iteration as the original armour had no shields or AI slot so I assume that's what this new Halo Wars armour has to be? Following that it must be second generation Spartans (the MC's batch) in that armour, they seemed to be the first to get the Mjolnir armour as I don't recall any mention of it in the Ilovebees audio recordings, the first generation spartan project seemed focused purely on the biological enhancements.

This sounds like nitpicking but I hope the company doesn't make parts look cool for the sake of it as it blows any feeling of it being a prequel out of the water. Prequels are so rarely convincing for this reason alone, the Enterprise NX-01 looking like the advanced Akira-class warships, the Phantom Menace ships featuring sophisticated graphical interfaces compared to clicky buttons in a New Hope etc.

That aside I loved the trailer, there's just so much attention to detail especially on the Elite who picks up the marine, I just can't believe they can't seem to get the Halo film going properly when I think it has the best potential to have a successful film out of any video game. Bungie seemed to be able to consistently produce high quality cinematic trailers so I'm sure they could do it with a film. Watched the trailer too many times, love the warthogs racing through the Scorpions then seeing the Scorpions and Warthogs lining up along the cliff while an air battle rages above them, it really seemed like the war the books described being brought to life.

John

[NekoFever]

I think I read that Halo Wars takes place somewhere between the Fall of Reach and the events of the first game. We don't know how canonical it's going to be though, or even whether or not the books are considered canon, so that could account for any oddities with the timeline.

The rest of this post contains spoilers of Ghosts of Onyx and speculation about the future direction of the story, so you might want to skip it if you haven't read the book.

->Open Spoiler<-

I finally got around to reading Ghosts of Onyx and enjoyed it. I've found all the Halo novels to be good fun, if rather filled with technobabble, but the revelations about the Forerunners in it were excellent. I'd guessed that Earth would be the "bomb shelter" from the Halo detonation (hence "the Ark", in the Biblical sense), but since that's presumably not the case now I'll be interested to see what the purpose of Earth is. And what happened with the Forerunners since they built such an intricate anti-Flood system only to disappear completely and leave the Flood on the Halos. Or did they?

It'll also be interesting to see what will happen with the other Spartans and everyone else sealed on Onyx. Presumably they won't be able to get out until after the Halos fire, and also presumably the firing of the Halos would eradicate everything that isn't on/in Onyx. Sounds like Earth could be the wild card here.

[Flabio]

From the Halo Wars FAQ:

Q: Where does ?Halo Wars? take place in the Halo timeline?
A: ?Halo Wars? takes place before Halo 1 during the UNSC?s first deadly encounters with the Covenant.

So that sets it about halfway through the novel 'The Fall of Reach'.

[Uli]

Halo 3 story &amp; campaign - anticipation and speculation

there's only 7 months to go for Halo 3 and still no in-game footage!? anyway, i guess it's not long until we'll see some real stuff and maybe time to start to speculate a little

most of all i wonder whether Bungie's "conclusion of the story arc" will resolve or at least deal with any of the (much more) interesting story lines of the fantastic "Ghosts Of Onyx" or focus on the Master Chief's path only!?

however, with so many interesting side story lines opened up in Nylund's latest Halo novel (e.g.

->Open Spoiler<-

will Dr. Halsey, the rest of team Blue and the surviving Spartan IIIs make it from Onyx and get into action to support Spartan 117?

- that would be a blast!), i can hardly imagine that Halo 3 will be able to ultimately conclude all this in a satisfying ending. what do you think?

[Extra Terrestrial]

While I haven't read any of the books or looked into the story towards the Halo series very much, I honestly reckon that Halo 3 will be focussed on Master Chief and Master Chief alone.

It will tie-up the Gravemind and Arbiter sub-stories too but the real concentration will be about Master Chief and his confrontations and journey to saving Earth.


It would be lovely to see the other Spartans in some shape or form (back story prospects?) but wouldn't that be throwing more questions at the player and the Halo universe than answering them?

Who knows but we don't have to wait long to find out.

[El Leone]

http://h3da.ascendantjustice.com/

Really good website. It has every piece of Halo 3 information with a source, you could spend ages reading through it.

[PeteJ]

Heads up

[Flabio]

Allegedly this one is to tie into the plot of the Halo Wars RTS.

I'm assuming you all know about the upcoming Marvel comic series that is set between Halo 2 and 3?

[JohnMcL7]

I think Halo 3 will be the MC only - I felt with Ghosts of Onyx they took the story as far away from the Masterchief to leave the game free to do whatever it wanted. I was very disappointed there were no other spartans in Halo 2 given blue team I think were on earth at the time, it's one of the reasons I liked playing as the Arbiter as his Elite teammates were far more useful than the cannon fodder human marines.

John

[Mardigan8]

I think Halo 3 will be the MC only - I felt with Ghosts of Onyx they took the story as far away from the Masterchief to leave the game free to do whatever it wanted. I was very disappointed there were no other spartans in Halo 2 given blue team I think were on earth at the time, it's one of the reasons I liked playing as the Arbiter as his Elite teammates were far more useful than the cannon fodder human marines.

John

Totally agree John. I felt the other SPARTANs were written into a situation where there could be no complaints about them not making it into Halo 3. A real shame actually as the game is looking brilliant and to see another SPARTAN skin along side MC at points would be quite special.

I cant wait to find out where the story goes from here with the remaining SPARTAN IIs and IIIs, Nylund really does write this universe well. I found myself loving Kurt every bit as much as Master Chief while reading through Ghosts of Onyx.

[fishbowlhead]

A young Sgt Jhonson? brilliant!! Cant wait for the book, love the others, not only do they flesh out the halo universe in an interesting way but there good books in there own right as well.

Ditto on kurt as well, poor guy at least he fell like a spartan should

[chopemon]

I haven't started reading it yet but I picked up Contact Harvest in Forbidden Planet yesterday.

It is the same size as the big edition of Ghosts of Onyx.

I'm looking forward to diving in, anyone else picked it up? Impressions?

[peeveen]

Can't say i'm all that interested in this latest novel, mainly because it doesn't seem like it'll be all that relevant to the events of the games. FS, FoR and GoO really hooked me because I felt kinda "involved" in some small way.

Either way, let us know your opinion of it once you're done.